“Ah’m tellin ya, he saved us, and Ah’m not about ta let ya put him in jail fer no reason!”

“Yeah!”

“That’s right!”

“Darlings, please calm down. We don’t want to put him in jail, we just want to move him to a more… secure location! Isn’t that right Applejack?”

I groaned as I began to regain consciousness, my voice thankfully causing the voices of the others to stop before they could make my headache worse.

Note to self, waking up after severe blood loss sucks.

“Actually, while I would prefer not to be put in a cell, if someone happened to have some advil, I’d gladly follow them into the deepest dungeon in Vlad the Impaler’s castle right now.”

I slowly opened my eyes, the harsh glare of the lights above my hospital bed almost forcing me to shut them again, but I pushed through. I needed to see if what I was hearing was real, if what I remembered had been real. A groan pushed it’s way from my throat as I pushed myself up on my good arm, my other arm was probably going to be quite useless for some time if the amount of bandages on it was any indication.

I almost passed right back out when I saw the room around me. Oddly enough, it wasn’t the ponies that almost put me back into a coma, rather it was which ponies were in the room that had me doubting my sanity.

Now, I had learned long ago to simply trust what my memories told me, otherwise I would wind up going down a path that led to a special brand of conspiracy-related insanity that I wanted no part of.

Though now that I think about it, according to the show the ponies did have several mind altering spells, which meant that-no, nope, not opening that door again, those thoughts can stay right where they are thank you.

Regardless, my point is that, while I had held some doubt to whether or not I had dreamed the events with the ponies and the manticore, I was unsurprised to see that those events were in fact, not a dream.

Probably should have picked that up from how screwed up my arm still was, even if I couldn’t feel what was likely a horribly painful wound, and a pretty potent reminder of the reality of my situation.

Wow, blood loss does not help one keep a coherent train of thought does it? Or is it the medicine in the IV drip beside me causing me to ramble like this?

Okay, steering back on track now, the point is that I wasn’t surprised to see ponies at the foot of my bed. What I was surprised to see was a certain lavender unicorn with a rather distinct two tone purple and magenta mane and starburst cutiemark using a file to collect shavings from my toenails in a sample dish. The image of Twilight Sparkle with her snout less than an inch from my foot with a look of absolute, brow furrowing concentration on her face might have been cute, if it hadn’t been so utterly absurd.

My gaze slowly lifted from the mare giving me the world's worst pedicure to the two mares standing behind her. Rarity’s brilliantly white coat and curled purple mane and tail were obvious tells of who she was, and her three-diamond cutie mark certainly didn’t hurt that conclusion. Currently she was doing her best to avoid my gaze, her blue eyes focusing very determinedly on the ceiling while she sheepishly rubbed one foreleg over the other.

Her body language was mirrored almost exactly by the orange mare with her blond mane and tail both done up in pony tails.

Ha.

Her trademark stetson and three apple cutie mark solidified her identity as Applejack, and she was certainly no more eager to meet my eyes now that I had noticed Twilight than Rarity was.

Ever so slowly my gaze descended back down to Twilight, the sound of her filing having never ceased, then I did what anyone would have done in my situation.

“Boop.”

The sound of filing ceased as Twilight stared cross eyed down at my big toe, which was currently pressing firmly on her snout. She blinked slowly, then raised her eyes up to meet mine.

Then she screamed.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a normal scream, no, Twilights scream was to a regular scream what a formula one race car is to model T, she actually managed to crack the windows.

When she finally stopped to take a breath I quickly spoke to cut off a repeat experience.

“What the actual hell?! Are you trying to put me back into a coma?”

“Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh YOU CAN TALK!”

“Yes, and not only that, I’m also capable of hearing sounds quieter than a jet engine! So please quiet down!”

“Quieter than a what?”

I rested my head in my good hand, this was going to be a long day.

“Fascinating, so humans don’t have any magic at all? How do they control the weather, or grow the plants?”

I sighed, we were beginning to enter hour three of what I had decided to call ‘Twilight’s Terrifically Terrible Torture Time”. By this point both Applejack and Rarity had decided to leave, taking their sisters and Scootaloo with them, probably to avoid being forced to listen to Twilight’s endless questions. Too bad I was stuck in a hospital bed and couldn’t do the same.

“We don’t have to control the weather, it moves in natural patterns on it’s own, and plants don’t rely on magic to grow healthily, though we do our best to help certain plants to flourish on farms. Now, if you don’t mind I’d really like to allow the doctor to come and check my wounds so that I can actually leave the hospital.”

Twilight rubbed the back of her head sheepishly, “Sorry, it’s just that I’ve never seen a human before, and I just want to know everything I can about you.”

“Look, I suppose we can continue this later, but not in three hour stretches alright, and as an information exchange. I don’t know much about your society either.”

Not exactly a lie, I have no way of knowing how accurate the show actually was.

“Alright, but I do have one last question…”

I sighed, “Fine, last one.”

Twilight clapped her hooves in glee before raising her notebook and quill in her magic, ready to record my answer to her next question.

“What do you eat?”

I blinked, I hadn’t been expecting that question.

“Well, um, Humans are omnivores, so we can eat a lot of things. We can eat several types of fruits, grains and vegetables, though there are certainly some types of plant matter we can’t eat, such as grass and hay. We also eat meat, in fact meat is a major part of our diet.”

“Oh, well then there should be no problem, everything you need should be available right here in town.”

“You, don’t have a problem with my eating meat?”

This time Twilight blinked, “Why would I?”

“Um, because horses are herbivores?”

“Horses maybe, ponies not so much. I suppose earth ponies might have been at one time, but pegasi and unicorns always have been omnivores, mostly because of how intensive our magic usage is, and after all the interbreeding between tribes,” Twilight shrugged, “ponies have all been omnivores for centuries.”

With that Twilight promptly walked out, going over her pages of notes as she did, and a moment later the Doctor came in. With a final sigh I laid back as the doctor began to inspect my injured arm.

Author's Note

This has been written for a while, I was just waiting to get it edited. However, it's taking a much longer time than I would like to get that done, so here's the chapter, I'll fix it when I get it edited.